Advancing Learning 2018

Digital Strategies are visioning and planning documents that help colleges align teaching and learning goals, digital capabilities and 21st century skills with infrastructure plans. Digital Strategies consider ethical considerations such as complexities of online identities, open source responsibilities, and navigating the privacy of citizens operating in digital environments. Digital strategies work with side by side with academic plans. Through an integrated panel format, the session and presenters will encourage sharing of examples of existing digital strategies and models in higher education. A goal is to expand awareness of digital strategies and have audience members give input. Medium technical needs.

Ontario Extend is a capacity building initiative that is grounded in the belief that the impact of learning should be the primary motivator for creating technology-enabled and online learning experiences. It aims to empower educators to explore a range of emerging technologies and pedagogical practices for effective online and technology-enabled teaching and learning. It explores the skills, knowledge, and attributes required to extend and transform our teaching and learning practices and to enrich our professional development. The intent of these resources is to provide the basis for more deliberate course design and digital pedagogical practice. This session will explore how Ontario Extend works, how to get involved and where it hopes to go in the future for Ontario Post Secondary Educators.

Recent experience with plagiarism detection services have shown a diminished capacity for finding all sources of cheating. In part, this is due to a number of  "defeat" strategies which are used to render low, often 0%, similiarity ratings. Detection is avoided by paying for a cloaking site to mask the copied material.

Since a significant source of copying of essays appears to be motivated by laziness, keeping a database of past assignments can help pinpoint the source of newly copied material. Over the last two years, I have developed some software which catalogues previous terms assignments. Key information from each paper is collected into a searchable index. Several different matching methods have been tested in order to find material which has been misappropriated from earlier work. This method has resulting in a significant increase in the detection of plagiarism and academic offences. The technology is ever evolving, and the presentation will focus on the types of comparisons, including which methods tend to reveal the most instances of academic offences.
The presentation will be interactive and participants will be encouraged to share their own experiences in tracking down plagiarism. The presentation requires no previous knowledge of plagiarism detection methods.

Engage your students with interactive activities, connect them through collaborative discussions, and gain instant insight into student learning through formative assessments with Nearpod.  Join us to bring more life into your classroom or homework!

In this workshop, we will explore what is screencasting, the various uses and tools, the pedagogy behind effective use of this tool and finally how to make the end result videos AODA complaint with captions and/or transcripts.

The traditional classroom involving the presentation of a singular subject is slowly going by the way side.  Modern classrooms will search for a perspective that allows cross-disciplinary learning in order to further engage students in what many consider more traditional topics.  The fascinating  world of Mathematics presents an extraordinary avenue to explore this topic.  This presentation will look at how the perceived polar opposite fields of sports and mathematics can be intertwined to provide a more cross-disciplined approach to learning.  

The goal of the session is to present an interactive approach to utilizing the physically stimulating side of sports in order to aid in the presentation and learning of  traditional concepts in mathematics.  The attendees are encouraged to bring a laptop in order to participate fully in the session.  The attendees will be capturing their own data and utilizing the data-set in an effective way to present mathematics concepts.  Once complete, attendees will have exposure to ideas on how to present mathematics from an unique and cross-discipline perspective.

In this session the presenters share their success, failures and lessons learnt from badging first-year nursing courses for the first time. The goal is to promote discussion about what works and what does not in order to bring badging to the next level. Strategies that have been successful include shared decision-making with students about rewards, facilitating intrinsic motivation among students, gearing badges to content review, promoting badges in the classroom, creating different levels of rewards and reminding students about rewards. Feedback from students about badging in courses will also be shared, which highlights different perspectives on their effectiveness. Labour-intensive process for awarding badges is discouraged as it creates a layer of unneeded complexity for the educator. Also, it is recommended to test badging options like crosswords inside Moodle before going live with the students. Educators new to badging are encouraged to become good friends with their learning management support team. A collaborative approach to badging across courses also improves buy-in. This discussion will be most effective if participants bring a device that can access google documents. Also bring any badges used or considered for integration into the classroom.

The modern, online version of competency-based education (CBE) is taking off in the US. In 2015 as many as 600 American institutions had implemented, or were in the process of implementing, CBE programs; this is a significant increase from 52 institutions the year before. CBE allows the learner to progress through a program by successfully challenging assessments, often at a personalized pace. This method of technology-enabled learning separates the learner from such barriers as time, location and pacing, allowing the student to progress on their own terms. The flexibility of CBE has led to a rapid expansion in the US, particularly for non-traditional learners. As MAESD looks to invest in flexible and innovatively designed programs for the non-traditional learner, this session will explore the fundamentals of CBE, trends in the US market and implications for higher education in Ontario.

A summary of research findings, funded by eCampusOntario, will be shared alongside lessons learned from a variety of US institutions (Sinclair Community College, Brandman University, Valdosta State University, Austin Community College, Texas A&M, etc.). Topics will include program operations, student support and interaction, program development and technological considerations. In an informal and interactive setting, this session will provide participants with an opportunity to draw on their experiences (via discussion and smartphone-enabled activities) with new educational modalities and gain access to an online "how to" resource.

Ever wonder if students actually study for their exams? We would like to share the insight and results of providing an online study skills module to students prior to their midterm exam. The rationale for this project is rooted in the importance of students engaging in effective study skills in preparation for their exam success and learning in the college setting. Online student activity data was examined to compare the midterm grade between those students that accessed the module and those that did not. Students were also asked to complete an anonymous survey to ask about their studying practices, including their experience with the study skills module. We would like to share our findings and feedback from our data and survey collection with other faculty.

The last decade has seen explosive growth in the availability of flexible eLearning opportunities that can positively affect instruction and education at all levels. As such, 21st century learning must embody not only relevant and innovative content but also provide a rewarding learning and supportive experience for students; however, this rapid growth can pose significant institutional challenges when trying to establish and sustain online learning initiatives.  To support a key college strategic goal, which is to advance the use of eLearning methodologies and technologies to provide students the opportunity to access flexible learning options, integrating flexible delivery modes into existing academic and institutional plans and evaluating strategies for growth and support of quality online learning can be hampered by both financial constraints and limited mechanisms for faculty and student support.

This Inspire session will demonstrate one academic school's specially designed courses and their subsequent remixes as eLearning specialists work to create high quality educational experiences with minimal resources.  The session will feature examples of courses that were created with grant money, in-house fully online programs, and templates for DIY instructors.  It will discuss some of the challenges of creating high quality digital learning experience with limited time and funds and showcase some innovative solutions for the curriculum design and instructional design processes.

Teaching strong communication skills to our students is imperative to their future success. With today's technology, this is increasingly translating into a need for visual literacy skills. Recently I introduced a capstone course for our Recreation and Leisure Services students which allows them to critically explore a specific area of their interest in our industry through research, culminating in the submission of an infographic and recorded 3 minute audio summary.
This session will be presented as best practice: allowing students to explore visual communication in the form of producing an infographic as a means to present their research.

The session will include the choice of Web 2.0 tools that are offered to the students to aid in the creation of their infographic, the resources I have gathered to assist the students in their creative process and the detailed rubric used to assess their final product. It will conclude with lessons learned based on student feedback and self-assessment. This presentation will be in the form of an animated video, downloadable resources and in person presence to answer Q&A.

Mind maps use in education range in a variety of applications, from note-taking to organizing and planning.  They can also be used as a strategy for collaborative learning where groups of students are required to communicate and negotiate, which leads to greater individual understanding. Furthermore, the inclusion of technology in education has allowed new affordances for mind map creation such as hypertext, infinite changes, and the insertion of media (images, videos, hyperlinks, and others). In the Mathematics Education program at Western University, online mind mapping has been included as a strategy for collaborative work for over a year, using the online version of Mindomo, a visual tool approved by the Ontario Software Acquisition Program Advisory Committee (OSAPAC). By including the use of Mindomo in the teacher education program, it is expected that TCs develop familiarity with a visual tool they could use in their classrooms.

This session presents a descriptive case study of the activities developed with teacher candidates, along with general results in terms of experiential and learning outcomes. The experience showed that Mindomo afforded new possibilities when compared to online forums, such as connecting, organizing, and including images or videos. Students had mixed opinions about the mind map activity. Some believed it was harder work and an overwhelming activity, while others liked the ability to see everyone's contributions and to choose where to participate. Finally, students were able to improve the continuity of contents between face-to-face sessions and online activities, increase their technological competence, and exercise collaboration skills.

As a part-time professor of graphic design for the last 13 years, I have been refining both my workflow and teaching methods to be as efficient as I can while doing the best job that I can for my students. I create interactive workshop handouts rather than printed ones which saves toner and paper while allowing us to hit the ground running in class more quickly.  I have created an extensive library of screencasts that I embed into my D2L framework.

I've created robust, and custom project rubric templates in Apple's Numbers spreadsheet app that automatically calculate all totals. I embed links in the rubric feedback section that connects students to one of my screencasts to help them in an area where they may be having difficulty. I store commonly needed comments in a menu bar utility for quick insertion. I've written an Applescript that will prepare a rubric based on a template that I select for each student in the class list in a matter of seconds. I've written an Applescript that will save all of the completed rubrics for the entire class to PDFs in seconds. I've written an Applescript that looks at my class list and then creates named project folders for every student. A typical student folder for 'project 1' would be named Smith_Steven_P1. I have an Applescript that will generate my root level folders for new course setups. I have set-up a multi-step file renaming system for batch renaming a full folder of student submissions from D2L.

I'm all about using technology to the fullest especially to create solutions to ease the "grunt work" so that I can spend more time doing the tasks that I enjoy, like creating new original content and recording screencasts.

Agility, responsiveness and cost efficiency are just but a few fundamental attributes of the "Cloud". Presently, Cloud Computing has profoundly altered the IT landscape and the future does not hint of signals begging to diverge from the present.  Over the course of the spring/summer of 2017 and winter 2018, I built and piloted a private IaaS Cloud environment at Durham College to evaluate how a Cloud solution can bolster our experiential learning engagement.

The objective of this session is to share how constructing a private IaaS cloud platform can alleviate experiential learning roadblocks within Information Technology college programs, and demonstrate how such a platform deployment can prepare IT students for the current Cloud Computing environment that's prevalent in the industry.

Challenges of such a build process included hardware resource limitations, explaining the untapped potential of the private cloud over a pure virtualized environment to stakeholders, and selecting the best CCMP (Cloud Computing Management Platform) for deployment. A critical takeaway/lesson learnt from the project was that there exist quite a gap on the knowledge of Cloud Computing technologies, among faculty and students. Realized successes included achieving a fully deployed IaaS environment capability of supporting most of the current experiential learning technology needs of program courses, a deployment that confirms to the NIST standards on Cloud Computing and max production capacity testing of the system. Application Towards Technology-enabled Learning: Provides a simplified and rapidly elastic environment for experiential learning, ideal DevOps environment, scalable research environment for students and invaluable teaching and research resource for faculty.

D2L has created a suite of tools, which can be added to the Brightspace platform, to easily create game-based and engaging content.  Join Randolph Streich as he leads us through a demonstration of the Brightspace Course Adventure Pack and how you can use these tools to increase student retention.

Google begins most of their meetings by practicing mindfulness, in fact, many Fortune 500 companies facilitate mindfulness practice for their employees. If Google finds their meeting are more calm, focused and productive using mindfulness, why don't we begin our classes with this same practice and why make our students wait till they graduate before starting this beneficial practice? Learn and practice mindfulness and discover techniques that guide students into more intentional learning.

Course development challenges, there are many. Differing understandings of course quality, academic terminology, and available college resources. Timelines being missed. Differing visions of expectations and what the course product will look like. Subject matter experts (SMEs) developing learning materials that have to be re-done. Don't start with PowerPoint! Sometimes the course development process can seem like 2 steps forward and 10 steps back. These challenges have been faced by external SMEs, faculty, instructional designers, curriculum development specialists, administrators, and others involved in the course creation process.

This interactive session will illustrate how Mohawk College's Centre for Teaching & Learning and Continuing Education department have teamed up to continually refine course development activities and overcome pain points that have become ingrained in the process. The presenters will share the story of a new, fully online program that was developed over the period of one year. Discussing how the development process was assessed and modified after each round of course development to better reflect each team members challenges and needs. While the journey of continual improvement never ends, successes have been realized: courses are of higher quality, timelines were hit, frustrations have been lowered, and SMEs have been better supported. Various perspectives will be shared, including different members of the development team, as well as the external SME.

The presentation will draw on the audience's experience with course development to shape how the story is told by kick-starting with polling (via smartphone) of the audience to identify who is in the room and the type of course development experiences they've encountered.  The audience will continue to engage by sharing their own challenges, questions, and alternate strategies throughout the presentation/discussion. The session will conclude with increased awareness of processes and options available to all who are involved in course development.

Work Integrated Learning (WIL) is a core element of post-secondary education and a key means by which applied and experiential learning is infused into curricula.  Throughout WIL experiences, students actively integrate theory and practice, skill development, networking, and career exploration, and those that participate in WIL have a documented advantage when transitioning into employment. WIL also benefits academic institutions, employers, and the broader community by increasing the availability of temporary employees, improving the dissemination of new ideas and innovations, and fostering connections between schools and local businesses and organizations.  As WIL increasingly becomes a centrepiece of post-secondary programs, ensuring student readiness for such experiences is crucial.  In order to optimize learning and reap the full benefit of WIL, students must be adequately prepared for these experiences.  

In this session, members from a multi-institutional team will discuss their development of a comprehensive set of 31 open access, learner-centred modules to support WIL preparedness among post-secondary students. Developed through a collaboration by four Ontario colleges, these modules have the potential to significantly enhance the flexible delivery and accessibility of WIL support for students of all levels.  By focusing on activities and assessments that are grounded in fundamental employment skills and preparedness frameworks but that can be adapted into program-specific iterations, these modules remain relevant even when applied to different contexts.  Participants will have the opportunity to discuss the motivation and development of these OERs and will review key criteria that influenced the overarching organization, sequencing, and design of the project.  A preview of the modules will be made available to all participants, who will be able to ask questions of the developers and brainstorm possible use cases. Participants are encouraged to bring a laptop or mobile device to this session.

In this 45-minute session eCampusOntario Program Managers Peg French and Jenni Hayman will describe an open textbook adaptation process leading to revised versions of two business resources for Ontario colleges. Beginning March 2-4, 2018 with an open textbook sprint, eCampusOntario team members and seven college educators partnered to review and adapt two open textbooks Fundamentals of Business and Communication for Business Professionals. The purpose of the adaptation was to align the resources with provincial program standards and provide a more contextualized experience for learners.

The benefits and challenges of collaborative sprint methods will be described based on educator and eCampusOntario staff experiences. Basic features of the Pressbooks textbook creation and export platform will be shared. Participants will be invited to ask questions about sprint and textbook development processes in dialogue with the presenters. This will be an introductory-level presentation and no prior experience will be necessary.

In our digital era it is becoming increasingly harder to captivate students with hands on experiential learning opportunities. Learn about how the Adventure Expedition and Interpretive Leadership program at Fanshawe College has found a solution to merge technology with experiential learning and provide students with an interactive digital video series of in field footage to be used in multiple facets of the classroom.

This session will explore the aims of an upcoming research project to compile a series of educational videos in the field that highlight specific components of the environment that students would otherwise not have the opportunity to explore and learn about.

Faculty will be sharing the insight and benefit of creating a digital compilation of in field videos to use in classroom engagement. These real life visual digital videos will enable students to observe (from the safety of the classroom) through online instruction, the exact best practice contextual behaviours being demonstrated by the instructor in the field. Creating a compilation of in field research techniques, strategies, and voice overlays provides students with the opportunity to view, analyze, and re-analyze in field research techniques and skills in different ways, therefore allowing students to view the same footage under different perspectives and within different critical thinking contexts.

Creating a series of online experiential videos connects the students in the classroom with a visual perspective on the techniques used to be successful in the field. A video series enhances student's research experience and critical thinking skills by enabling students to view and analyze the methodologies involved in practical field work, and to think critically and reflect on the experiences presented in the field.Come learn about this innovative method to merge digital discovery with experiential learning in the classroom.

How can you achieve the greatest benefits from adding videos to your digital learning resources? Educators across the world are finding that a well-crafted video can be a powerful learning tool. In this session, you'll review the basic principles of universal design for learning, with special focus on how those principles can be applied to videos for lecture, demonstration, student feedback, projects and assignments. Learn from the experiences of professors in two very different fields, including the challenges they encountered and the surprising ways their students responded. Gain tips and tricks for setting reasonable expectations, generating ideas, finding resources and personalizing content.

This session is for anyone interested in adding video to their course resources. It will be of most benefit to beginners or those experiencing challenges in using online video as a teaching tool.

Providing students with an opportunity to engage in entrepreneurial activities is a learning outcome in many programs. This session will show how a course in the Health, Wellness & Fitness Program at Mohawk College fostered while inspiring students to engage with the content. Key elements of the course include: INdustry partnerships, INterdisciplinary collaborations and the opportunity for students to engage in "real world" applications of entrepreneurship/INtrapreneurship. Using these key elements, students worked towards the development of a real or hypothetical company/product.
The business plan, which utilized online technology provided by an industry partner, culminated in an opportunity for some to pitch Dragon's Den style to a panel of industry experts at an event that showcased the business concepts.

This session will describe how the course is designed, how it engaged students, incorporated authentic opportunities and how it encouraged collaboration from start to finish. Participants will have the opportunity to interact in a brainstorming session on how they might apply these concepts to their own program and courses.

In keeping with the theme of Innovation (i.e. innovative research), this session will share the findings of a recent collaborative research project, sponsored by eCampusOntario, that investigated 1) how faculty are currently supported in technology-enabled learning (TEL) within the Ontario college system, 2) what expert insights can be gleaned from Ontario college support providers, and 3) in what ways can these insights best be put into practice institutionally and provincially?

This session will examine the evolving practice of post-secondary TEL support providers in light of the new opportunities enabled by learning technologies. By the end of this session, participants will be able to:
1) Describe how faculty are currently supported in technology-enabled learning (TEL) within the Ontario college system, and
2) Articulate opportunities to enhance effective, efficient, and timely support to faculty in TEL.

Although the research is specific to the Ontario college environment, the researchers hope to engage in conversations with participants from other jurisdictions across Canada to share and compare experiences and perspectives. To facilitate the engagement of as many participants as possible, active learning methods will be used. Participants will be asked to engage in structured small group discussion (initiated through guided questions) and then share a summary of their discussions in the large group setting. Participants are welcome to bring devices of their choice to the session, but they are not required to do so.

I present an explanatory case study that investigates the affordances of new media in creating assessments that more effectively test the outcomes of the learning process and how a constructive alignment can be reached between assessment and multimodal digital curriculum in an ESL program in Post-secondary education. Study questions concerned the main reasons behind the misalignment and how to create a constructive alignment between assessment and multimodal digital curriculum.

First, I discuss my theoretical framework and how I employed theoretical bricolage; the Multimodality and Multiliteracies framework and Assessment Theory elucidated data collected from semi-structured interviews and curriculum and assessment documents. The Actor Network Theory (ANT) was used to "follow the actors" which created an alignment/ misalignment between multimodal curriculum and assessment. Second, I discuss results which indicated that accountability models aborted or partly mitigated the implementation of an aligned multimodal curriculum and assessment as language proficiency tests often deviated classroom practice from multimodality and multiliteracies framework. I elucidate how data also intimated assessment “for” learning, “while” learning and authentic assessment that maximize the learners' chances to demonstrate their understanding in different forms of representation. This explanatory embedded single case study enriches alignment research as it proposes a fine tuned, multi-dimensional model of alignment that is germane with curriculum and assessment concerned with the issue of learner's diversity. I incorporate Mode in the new alignment model as there is a misalignment between the mode in which teaching and learning occur in ESL/EAP classrooms and the mode in which assessment is administrated. I also include genre in the new alignment model as embedding English language in the discipline specific genre is considered best practice by English language specialists (Arkoudis et al., 2012; Wingate, 2015). I also comprise technologies as technologies used to facilitate learning and assessment are not automatically well aligned (McNeil et al., 2012).

The study may provide teachers with a myriad of strategies and techniques that may facilitate the implementation of an aligned assessment and multimodal digital curriculum in ESL/EAP programs in Post-secondary education. Additionally, it may inform ESL instructor's practice who may give learners the opportunity to demonstrate their understanding in different forms of representation, hence, unlock their full potential, optimize their learning and maximize their chances of success. I elucidate how the study entertains implications for curriculum development, assessment design and teacher professional development.

Voice technologies today are almost everywhere, whether it's in vehicles or on our smart devices. Statistics are clear that large numbers of students live with a wide range of disabilities, both disclosed and undeclared But our legacy systems are not always at the cutting edge to help reach those with learning disabilities and reading difficulties. Voice can be a key part of the solution! Why not speech-enable your LMS platform and its contents so that everyone can choose to listen?  It is very much a “Universal Design” approach to boost learning and Inclusion across our communities. ReadSpeaker is the world-leader in voice technology for learning systems. This session will outline the scope of the issue, what can be done to easily switch-on world-class voice technology in the major platforms and beyond, and what is coming in the world of voice technologies.

The CODE Book is Fanshawe College's comprehensive resource guide designed to support faculty with the development of new courses and the revision of existing courses. Based on the principles of universal design for learning (UDL), The CODE Book encourages faculty to develop accessible course materials with the support of the built-in accessibility tools in Microsoft and Adobe software. Therefore, The CODE Book, at over 260 pages and filled with templates, worksheets, diagrams, key-boxes, and internal navigational links, had to be made accessible in the same way.

In this session, I will share my experiences with ensuring The CODE Book achieved the same accessibility standards as it promoted to its readers. Those experiences include the technical and institutional challenges I encountered throughout the process and the interactions I had with faculty and staff that led me to uncover opportunities for expanding, yet simplifying, resources and training to support those faculty and staff as they develop their own accessible course materials. The goals of this session are to INSPIRE a dialogue about those challenges and opportunities to bring accessibility to the forefront of course design instead of addressing it as an afterthought.

This INspire session will focus on a mixed methodologies research project conducted in 2017-18 around the effectiveness of the Online Course Development Program (OCDP) professional development (PD) model in an effort to answer the research question "What is an effective, efficient model to support faculty in order to build institutional capacity for online course development?"  The specific objectives of the proposed research project were to:

- Gain deeper insights on the relevance of work-integrated and group-based learning to support faculty needs for online course development;
- Quantify impacts of the OCDP in its current state to identify strengths and areas for program improvement; and
- Define a program model that is cost-effective without eroding the quality of the program.

The OCDP model enables the Instructional Design team to work collaboratively with groups of faculty in both face-to-face and online sessions. In doing so, faculty are able to explore effective online teaching practice, curriculum design and pedagogy, as well as best practices for technology integration, including video creation, screen-casting, and leveraging the Learning Management System (LMS). Faculty are given the opportunity to participate in hands-on activities and are provided with the time and support required to successfully design and complete an online course.  Faculty who participate in the program also have the opportunity to work one-on-one or in small groups with a faculty mentor who offers continued support during and after the conclusion of the program.

This PD model also supports the creation of personal learning networks and communities of practice. Several studies have determined that conditions for improving teaching and learning are strengthened when teachers collectively question ineffective teaching routines, examine new concepts of teaching and learning, discuss means to acknowledge and respond to difference and conflict, and engage actively in supporting professional growth.

In addition to collaborative discussion and time for give and get sharing, iPads will be available to provide participants with the opportunity to explore the structure of the OCDP along with course content and activities.

The goal of this session is to promote thinking about ways in which YouTube video creation can be leveraged to enhance teaching both online and in-person. Major challenges to video creation include the time, skills and software required. Through practice creating videos, the presenter has learned tips and tricks for creation of both on and off camera video types. Creating videos has the potential to help students worldwide when shared openly. For the students in the classroom it can make lessons more accessible. When used in combination with other technologies, like H5P, the videos can become more interactive and enhance student learning anywhere. Participants are encouraged to bring web-enabled mobile devices to the presentation.

http://nursekillam.com/youtube/ 

FIRST Robotics Transcends Traditional Boundaries of Technological Education
This session will introduce the participant to FIRST Robotics and how it can be used to transcend the traditional boundaries of technological education and engage a diverse audience of students through authentic and problem based learning.

FIRST - For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology is a not for profit  public charity that was started by Dean Kamen in 1989 to inspire young people's interest and participation in science and technology.

FIRST utilizes a team based, collaborative robot challenge that motivates young people to pursue education and career opportunities in science, technology, engineering, and math, while building self-confidence, knowledge, and life skills.

FIRST  activities can be leveraged to build cross-institutional teams of faculty and provide students with real world cross curricular learning opportunities. FIRST also engages high school level students and provides a clear pathway for recruitment to multiple programs at the college level.
The presentation will include the physical robot created by the students from both Fanshawe and the supporting high schools (John Paul II and Ingersol District Collegiate) that was used at the competitions this past semester. Opportunities for cross curricular and capstone projects will be highlighted as well as descriptions of two capstones that were a result of the FIRST robotics team.

Students spend considerable time interpreting the information educators provide, often in a highly curated fashion designed to produce repeatable results. However, what does it all mean? Where did the information come from? Why should the information be trusted? If students entering the professional world are to learn coping skills for dealing with the vast quantities of information presented to them, they will need to understand the processes by which data is selected, processed, structured, and presented. Otherwise, information will simply be accepted as it was in the traditional classroom, and decisions will be no more reliable than a roll of the dice.

Learning the fundamentals of decision support using live data and visualizations with the Tableau software platform allow students to deepen their understanding of what information is really trying to say. Students work through the process of audience identification, requirements gathering, data selection, analytics, aggregation, and presentation in the form of a dashboard project to learn the effect of the decision support process on the decisions people make.
The deployment of data-driven decision making has grown exponentially to coincide with the volume of available data. As organizations build capability to collect data from internal and external sources, the development of architecture to process, structure, and interpret data is critical to ensuring reliable decision making. Business decision support systems turn data into actionable information.

Reliable decision making requires access to information presented in an efficient, understandable format that is appropriate to the intended audience, and does not introduce systemic bias into the decision process itself. Those responsible for organizational direction based upon both long and short term objectives need to understand the process by which information is delivered to them in order to comprehend the underlying meaning of the information itself.

New innovations in learning technology have at times displaced older learning methods and traditional learning supplements such as physical props or models. Learning tools such as Kahoot and other web-based applications have put cell phones in student's hands instead of these older physical objects. These new technologies have created a modern way to achieve student engagement that is well suited to the learning climate, however in this session I aim to show that new and old can coexist and provide an even stronger learning experience for students.
Web based applications meet students on their own terms and allow for gamification of learning objectives. However, sometimes this experience still leaves students divorced from reality. When students are able to physically hold a model or prop and use it to explain concepts they become experiential learners and grasp materially to a deeper extent. Both methodologies have strengths and drawbacks, and so we should look to merge these experiences and attempt to create content for web-based platforms that actually integrates physical models and props.

In this session I will engage participants in a demonstration using a Kahoot session (along with other applications) in conjunction with miniature toy animal figurines to demonstrate basic scientific concepts related to natural selection. I encourage participants to bring their phones and play along (minimal technical knowledge required).

This session will demonstrate the use of digital simulation to enhance delivery of theoretical concepts. Additionally, attendees will be shown how automating random assessment (both practical and theoretical) can dramatically improve retention, as well as reduce ineffective time for both students and educators. These concepts enable assessment to more readily be used as a developmental tool rather than strictly a measure of success or failure.

As eLearning continues to expand, so too do the challenges with respect to administering online assessments. Balancing the need for flexible testing options while also preserving academic integrity can pose challenges for many institutions as they expand their online teaching presence. This session will focus on one college's approach to expanding and managing online testing in the digital age. Aligning with Fanshawe's core values of focusing on students, utilizing resources wisely, and engaging each other, our team has implemented a centralized collaborative process for the administration of online testing for the college.  This Innovate Panel will discuss how we have centralized the function of online testing within our Campus Test Centre, and partnered with our regional campuses, Contact North and other external centres to help accommodate our online students.  As well, we will discuss our experiences with using B-Virtual remote proctoring,  as well as, SmarterProctoring scheduling software. The session will outline some of the challenges, key takeaways, and our solution for Spreadsheet based testing. The overall goal in our endeavor is to ensure flexibility and ease of access for students taking online courses.

Higher education increasingly sees technology as a cost effective and innovative solution to many challenges (Hooper & Rieber, 1998; Kirkwood & Price, 2014). Yet, there are many barriers to the integration of technology in the classroom, including technology-related anxiety (Kotrlik, & Redmann, 2009; Redmann, & Kotrlik, 2004), insufficient institutional resources and supports (Buchanan, Sainter, & Saunders, 2013) and a lack of faculty confidence and expertise (Nkonge, & Geuldenzolph, 2006). Technology takes time to master (Ely, 1990) and, while faculty are encouraged to fully engage students and integrate innovative practices in increasingly large classes, it can be a challenge. Faculty need to learn both how and why technology can be used to engage students (Johnson, Wisniewski, Kuhlemeyer, Issacs & Krzykowski, 2012). Additionally, technology must be able to contribute meaningfully to the classroom and the content, yet the effectiveness of many classroom technologies has received relatively little empirical attention (Kirkwood & Price, 2014).

In light of this, the Centre for Teaching and Learning at Humber College piloted a new collaborative approach to educational development, entitled "Cutting EDge". In this model, the professional learning, digital learning, and SoTL teams united to provide a support-rich opportunity for faculty to experiment with and integrate a new technology-enhanced approach (Student Responses Systems, or SRS's) in their classrooms. Faculty were trained not only how to use several different SRS polling tools, but also about best-practices from the literature. Over the course of the semester, each faculty member tried three SRS tools, each time with in-class support and training. To document the impact, the SoTL team recruited each faculty member's students, and survey data were collected on perceived quality of classroom interactions, engagement, and the SRS tools. Focus groups were also conducted with faculty, to gather responses about their perceived quality of classroom interactions, their students' engagement, and the impact on their teaching practices.

In this INVENT session, we will share not only the data we collected, but also the lessons we learned from the first iteration of Cutting EDge. The model represented a new and creative approach not only to educational development at Humber, but also to SoTL research: by embedding the educational development within a broader research project, we were able to gather data from hundreds of students, across several faculty and disciplines, on the impact of a technology-enhanced teaching approach, all within a single semester. At the same time, faculty were each supported at a very personal level, which allowed for meaningful experimentation within their practice. As an added benefit, Cutting EDge exposed faculty to the SoTL research process, which they might not otherwise have encountered.

Although the intent of this initiative focused on technology-enhanced learning, the lessons learned about the educational development process were equally valuable. The model provided a safe and supportive arena for faculty to take risks, increasing the likelihood of micro-successes and future engagement in development and experimentation. While this required a great deal of time and support, the benefits were immediate, explicit, and ongoing: teaching practices were transformed.

After learning about the model, participants will have the opportunity to try out some of the SRS tools that were used in Cutting EDge (Plickers, Mentimeter, and Kahoot!). Participant responses will then serve as a launching point for a broader discussion on new and innovative approaches to educational development.
By the end of this session participants will be able to:
1) Recognize the value of adopting an integrated and collaborative support-rich approach to educational development.
2) Identify SRS tools that could be quickly integrated into the classroom.
3) Apply lessons learned from the Cutting EDge model to their own institutional context

*Participants are asked to bring a mobile device or tablet in order to participate in the session.

We all know how important Accessibility and Universal Design are to creating INclusive learning content and providing equal access and opportunity to people with a diversity of abilities and needs.  At Humber College, we have been considering different solutions for making our content more accessible.  

In this presentation, we will demonstrate our exciting new open-source (which means you can take it and use it too!) Accessibility Bar that we are implementing into all our online courses moving forward.  As well, we will show you different Accessibility techniques and Universal Design practices that we are utilizing in the development of our course content. This session is meant to be a show-and-tell of what we are currently doing at Humber College with regards to accessibility in our online courses as well as a question and discussion session.

In this session, you will learn about what Open Badges are and look at how and why various institutions and organizations are using badges as a way of rethinking recognition. You will see various badge systems, pathways and the learning design process' behind the badges to get you thinking about what kind of badges you might consider for your own context. This session is geared toward those who are new to these amazing alternative forms of recognition. The examples we'll look at will help participants see the many ways badges can be used to recognize everything from achievements to knowledge and skills to affiliations and values. We'll also take a peek at what's been going on under the CanCred Factory hood during the eCampusOntario Open Badge evaluation period. We'll show you how the creation and issuing of badges happens and get you thinking about possible partners and frameworks you could work with. You''ll leave ramped and ready to get started on your own badging system...and possibly with an open badge that you've earned!

Touchcast is an IOS app for creating smart, Interactive video for the classroom and beyond.
Imagine where students can watch a video, interact with web pages, read documents, PDFs, look at maps, take short quizzes, even check their investment portfolio all with out leaving the video.

TouchCast does have a medium complexity learning curve to master but beginners can get up and running with excellent results in a couple of hours.
The app is based around vApps (video apps). vApps are small apps that can be set up and delivered to pop up in the video at any time. The vApp can be interacted with while the video itself pauses (or not). Record the video direct from the iPad or import video clips; add sound clips, titles, whiteboards. Record with Green Screen technology and replace the background with still photos or video. Trim the video in app and add the vApps.
When you're ready share your video with social media (YouTube, Facebook, Twitter), copy the code for sharing, or embed into a web site.TouchCast has excellent support with video tutorials for its features.

The best feature of all...it's a FREE app. If you need privacy or the ability to live stream there is a paid version available. The TouchCast Studio works with iOS only (iPhone, iPad, iPod). There is a multiple camera set up by using a second and third device, and use another device as a remote control. So bring your iOS device, and if interested, download the app from the App Store ahead of the workshop.